Custard

E gifted me her excess egg yolks, so I thought that I would make some custard to go with the Christmas cakes and puddings that we received for Christmas.

I did a bit of a search, many of the recipes available online were for the thicker creme patisserie; I have subsequently learned that the type of custard that I was after is known as creme anglaise.

The egg yolks themselves were in pairs, and I needed a recipe that either used two yolks or was easily convertible. The recipe that I used as a basis is from cuisine.com.au. It seemed fairly straightforward and I did not even need a calculator to divide the ingredients for 2 egg yolks!

2 egg yolks
1/4 cup caster sugar
200mL milk
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract

Put milk into a heavy based pan and bring to the boil.
Whisk egg yolks in a glass, heatproof bowl until they change colour. Add sugar and whisk until creamy.


Add the boiled milk and whisk well. Chuck in the vanilla extract.
Place the bowl over a pot of simmering water. The bottom of the bowl should not touch the water.
Stir with a wooden spoon. The custard is ready when the custard thickens and coats the back of the wooden spoon.


Notes
Make sure that there is enough water as I managed to boil the pot dry, luckily I figured out what the strange sound was!
I think I cooked it for far too long. I was expecting the custard to thicken significantly, so I was stirring for over an hour before I finally realised that it was sticking to the back of the spoon. This custard is a pouring custard.
The original recipe used vanilla beans. I substituted vanilla extract. I am not sure of the best point in the recipe to add it - I added it with the milk. I nearly forgot!!

I think that the custard with this amount of sugar is too sweet, and next time I will reduce the amount of sugar I add.

Custard and fruit cake!


Some custard cooking tips from baking911.com and Practically Edible.